Tag Archives: brainweek

What did high school students in Uganda do to celebrate Brain Awareness Week five years ago? How about neuroscientists and students in the United Kingdom in 2009?

For the month leading up to this year’s campaign (March 11-17), we have been posting #FlashBackFriday pictures on the official Dana Foundation Instagram to give our followers a glimpse of past celebrations from around the world. Just last year alone, we had registered partners from 43 countries and six continents participate in activities about the brain and its importance.

If you want a closer look at how we’ve celebrated Brain Awareness Week in the past—and also want to stay up-to-date with how we’re celebrating this year—follow us on Instagram! We’ll be sharing posts from randomly selected followers who show us how they help spread awareness about brain-related issues, and use the official campaign hashtags (#BrainAwarenessWeek, #BrainWeek)!

Brain Awareness Week begins on Monday, and partners all around the world have been working hard coordinating events and activities—now it’s up to you to attend! If you live in the New York City area, our good friends at braiNY, the Greater NYC Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience, have put together a diverse series of events happening throughout the month of March.

The BioBus will be parked uptown (on W. 125 St. and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.) on March 9, from 10 am to 3 pm, for kids and adults wanting to hop onboard the Mobile Lab for some hands-on science. Attendees will also have a chance to speak to real scientists who study the brain.

Are you ready for Brain Awareness Week? With less than one week left before it begins, there are still plenty of ways to get involved.

The global campaign takes place every March, but the evolving ideas, growing number of partners, and new ways to share information continue to make each year a little different. Social media plays a huge role in how the world sees the creative ways our partners around the world are sharing information about the brain. Not to mention, it’s a great way to recap the day’s events, in case you missed anything. When sharing anything about Brain Awareness Week (including your #HealthyBrainChallenge posts), be sure to use the official hashtags: #BrainWeek #BrainAwarenessWeek

With so much happening all at once during the week, we want to help you stay up-to-date with all the amazing work our partners are doing to provide fun and informative events to the public (most of which are free!).

As we gear up for Brain Awareness Week 2019, the global campaign to increase awareness of the progress and benefits of brain science, we challenge you to share how YOU live a brain healthy life. The Healthy Brain Challenge begins March 11, and anyone can participate!

Here’s how it works:

Do you play board games to challenge your mind? Maybe you exercise and participate in social gatherings three times a week. If so, you are already part of the challenge! Post a picture on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook showing ways that you lead a brain healthy life. Tag your post with #healthybrainchallenge during March 11-17, and your photo may get featured on our social media.

Be sure to follow us on Instagram (@danafoundation), Facebook (The Dana Foundation) and Twitter (@dana_fdn), where we will post seven healthy tips (one for each day of Brain Awareness Week) on how you can lead a brain healthy life.

Visit dana.org/baw to look up events in your area and for more information on Brain Awareness Week.

Watching a recommended movie is risky business. If the stars don’t align in your favor, you might find yourself nurturing a distrust of your source, forever altering conversations with friends and colleagues. Even when Oscar season rolls around, which should reliably provide lists of “good” movies, you might question if everyone sat through the same movie after scanning a few social media feeds. Does data science offer us evidence of something we might be missing?

Pascal Wallisch, Ph.D.. Photo credit: Yadin Goldman

“There is a tremendous diversity in appraisal for any given movie,” said Pascal Wallisch, Ph.D., clinical assistant professor at NYU. “It’s actually quite striking.” Wallisch, seeking to measure the reliability of movie critics, gathered ratings from critics, aggregator sites (think Rotten Tomatoes and The Internet Movie Database (IMDB)) and a multi-year study with 3,000-participants. After determining the correlations of reviews from a pool of over 200 movies, he admits to being astonished—there was not a single film with any hint of a “moderate degree of agreement.”

“The Science of Movies,” presented by Wallisch and organized by Think&Drink NYC’s Gil Avidor, is a stimulating yet relaxed evening talk, suitably tailored to seekers of intelligent nightlife. Wallisch, whose research interests hone in on the intersection of psychology and neuroscience, extolled the virtues of finding your “movie twin,” bemoaned the scarcity of originality (ahem, creativity) in present-day Hollywood, and explained what happens to a brain exposed to a healthy dose of M. Night Shyamalan. Continue reading →